The COVID-19 Relief & Recovery Fund, a collaborative effort with Waccamaw Community Foundation and other organizations across coastal counties of South Carolina, has received a $500,000 challenge donation to spur more donations up to the same amount by April 20.
That gives us two weeks to maximize this opportunity and bring in one million dollars to support the organizations responding to this emergency in our communities, including in Horry and Georgetown counties.
The generous gift is from Blackbaud founder Tony Bakker and his wife, Linda Bakker, who have lived in South Carolina with their family for 31 years.
“We think that many of the outstanding nonprofit organizations in our area that support the most vulnerable amongst us will be overwhelmed and will need all the financial support they can get,” Tony Bakker said.
“Every dollar we collect goes directly to the nonprofits working on providing medical care, food access, financial support and more to those most impacted by the Coronavirus outbreak in our region,” said Angel Johnson-Brebner, director of Waccamaw Community Foundation. “We encourage those who are able to make a donation to the fund to maximize these efforts.”
You can make a secure, online donation here, and you can even designate that your donation stays within your county.
A record number of South Carolinians have applied for unemployment benefits amid the pandemic, with Horry County leading the state with nearly 15,000 unemployment claims in the last two weeks of March, according to the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics. With a processing backlog at the S.C. Department of Employment and Workforce, workers are expected to rely more heavily on nonprofit services to make ends meet.
The COVID-19 Relief & Recovery Fund is set up to fast-track the application process for nonprofits in need of more support to meet the increased demand. Grants are deployed as quickly as possible on a rolling basis to help meet community needs as they emerge.
By working with our partners in this region, we are leveraging our combined expertise in responding to disasters and rapidly deploying resources to the organizations that need it most.
The fund has awarded one of its first grants in Horry County to support hospitality workers who are out of work due to the coronavirus outbreak. Read more about that here.
